


Contingent

by orphan_account



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Alternate Universe - Post-Apocalypse, First Meetings, Gen, Isolation, Melodramatic, Mild Language, Minor mention of animal death, Reflection, but very fun to write
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-11
Updated: 2018-10-11
Packaged: 2019-07-29 16:52:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,144
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16268399
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: In a shack at the end of the world, there lives a boy.





	Contingent

**Author's Note:**

> Me, sobbing: Why....w-why do they talk so much but have,,no,,personality
> 
>  
> 
> I took the psat yesterday running on four hours of sleep and two poptarts, so this baby right here is my blatant escapism fic.

In a shack at the end of the world, there lives a boy. 

Or a man, maybe; it has been some time, such a long time since he has bothered to keep track. There is a faded calendar on the wall, years and years old, covered in illegible lettering and red-pen circles, but the story it tells is not his own. Every now and then he sits and leafs through the pages, from January to February to April all the way to December and then back again. The March page has long been repurposed into a small paper crane that lives on the windowsill of his shack at the end of the world.

March was not a good month. Structureless as his life is now, he is glad that there is no longer a March.

And what use is a functional calendar, anyways? The length of time that he has endured matters very little; He will move forwards until he _won’t,_ and then his bones will continue to reside within the shack at the end of the world.

He sees death in his mind’s eye often, feels it nip at his heels, imagines a bleached-bones skeleton sitting in the recliner with a chipped mug falling from its fingers. It’s an inevitable future, and one he welcomes, because it’s a much prettier picture than anything he has ever managed to draw.

There are cans haphazardly stacked in the corner, many many cans with the labels picked off and pinned next to the calendar. The boy who lives in the shack at the end of the world likes to stack them into pyramids when he is bored.  
The cans are stacked into pyramids often.

There is a thin mattress and piles and piles of blankets because the end of the world was very, very _cold._ The aftermath of the end of the world is colder still, stagnant like the soupy lake he boils water from, still like the air before a storm.

His shack has four walls, made of corrugated and rusted metal, a tin roof, and a single window. The grass grows tall around it, straw-yellow, dead-looking grass that muscled it’s way into the _after._ It grows up and through the old chain-link fence, twisted around the halfhearted loops of barbed wire. The fence is falling, returning to the earth, sagging under the weight of protecting him from nothing.

No brightness streams through the window. There is nothing but a dull, rusty smog, set ablaze by the watery light of a long obscured sun. There is no noise, no crickets or cicadas to break the monotony, but that’s okay because he has never really liked noise. 

(Now mind you, he has never really liked _silence_ either, but silence is better than the screeches and groans of twisting metal, than the sound of rupturing earth and tearing sky.)

The sky is perpetually tinted orange. He does not like that, he can’t even pretend to, but still he draws the ugly orange sky with his cheap colored pencils. Through witnessing the reclamation of the world, he learned to appreciate any sort of creation, even the ugly kind. And, because he is not running away, he pins the drawings of the sky next to the old, faded calendar.

Life in the shack at the end of the world is dull. He draws. He eats. He filters and boils water. He stacks the cans into pyramids. He does his best not to think.

He repeats. Repetition is something he does well. Thinking is something best not done at all. With thinking comes an ache in his bones, a world-weary helplessness that pumps through his veins by means of a heavy heart.

At the beginning of the end of the world, he had a pet. A dog, he thinks, or maybe a cat. 

The little part of him that _itched_ and _yearned_ for companionship was squashed when that dog (or maybe a cat) died. He buried it in front of the shed. There is grass there, now. It is not nearly as tall as the other blades, but it lies regardless, patchy stubble in a neat rectangle. 

Living at the end of the world is not difficult, but it is tiring. He can feel the energy slowly seeping from his bones and into the polluted air, flowing from him into the straw-yellow grass that grows up and up and up. Everything circles back around to that _grass._ It’s really rather annoying, because the grass is straw-yellow, not even green, not even bronze like wheat. He misses green grass ( and flowers, and the noises of the city, and his mother, and his friends-)

But his solitude does not last forever. Very few things do.

Some day, at some time, he hears something.

The boy who lives in the shack at the end of the world is not so far gone that he cannot recognize voices. His vocal cords are shot, rusty from disuse just like the corrugated metal walls, but while his world may no longer make noise he can still find a way.

He has always known that, one way or another, his shack is going to come to an end. He has always known that, one way or another, he is going to come to an end. He had always assumed that he would go first, and now there is a voice so he must go.

He tries to put those rusted vocal cords to use. The first word the boy at the end of the world says in such a long time is cracked and broken.

“Hello?”

And isn’t _that_ something, his voice. It’s not like the cicadas were, or the crickets, or the songbirds or the sound of the trees being rustled by the wind, but that sorry _hello_ settles right into the walls of the shack at the end of the world.

He hears the voice again, muffled by the walls. Slowly, he ventures out the door and into the grass, walking towards in the direction of his sagging, chain-link fence.

“Hello?” He says again. It comes out clearer this time, his ability to speak falling back into place with practice, his hinges and joints oiled, the gears in his throat turning once more.

Again, he calls.

“Holy fuck, did you hear that?” A voice says, a new one.  
And slowly, for the first time in he doesn’t know how long, the boy who lives in the shack at the end of the world sees a person.

He emerges through the smog, pushing blades of grass aside with swatting hands and some rather creative curses. The man is tall, broad-shouldered, with sharp, sharklike teeth and a bald head. He’s wearing an odd vest that’s mismatched and padded, with Velcro-secured pockets all up and down the front. It’s shoddily made but functional, much like the rest of his patchwork clothing. His shoes are two different colors.

The stranger sees the boy next to the sagging, chain-link fence, and freezes.

“Holy _shit!_ ” He yells over his shoulder. “ Fuck, guys get over here! There’s a person out here!”

The next person the boy sees comes barreling through the grass. He stops with an _oomph_ next to shark-tooth. His hair is orange, like the sky, but much less ugly because it, at least, is natural. His eyes are frightening, like the end of the world, their sharp hazel color hooded by something a little darker, but his voice is bright. He, too, wears a vest, cobbled together out of mismatched fabric and duct tape and Velcro.

“Ryuu, that’s a person!” He exclaims.

“I know Shouyou!”

“What’s a person doing out here?”

“That’s what I’m trying to figure out.”

They both turn and scrutinize the boy, Shouyou’s nose scrunching as he does so. He opens his mouth to say something else when somebody runs smack-dab into his back.

“ _Shouyou,_ ” the newcomer says. “What did we say about running off?”

“Accckk, sorry Kenma!” Shouyou says. “But look! Ryuu found a person.”

Kenma looks at the boy, and his eyes widen the tiniest bit. And then the exhaustion comes crashing back down, a wave that pulls at the corners of his mouth and pulls his hand to scrub at his hair.

“So he did,” Kenma states plainly. He sounds like this is the last thing he wanted to do today. “Goddammit, somebody get Daichi. And _you_ ,” he gestures to the boy, “You stay there.” 

Kenma has scary eyes too. Not frightening like Shouyou’s, but cold and analytical. Like a cat. His stare holds the boy in place as Shouyou runs off to get whoever Daichi is. Kenma shifts to stand closer to Ryuu, almost protective, gaze never leaving the boy.

“I’m going to need you to keep your hands where we can see them,” he says quietly, “ And no sudden movements. It’s nothing personal, just a precaution.”

He says nothing else, only fiddles with a lock of his faded blonde hair. The roots are coming in dark, giving it a bizarrely hypnotic effect, especially in the hazy brown air. Kenma’s hair is shoulder-length. The boy at the end of the world had once, in his boredom, allowed his hair to grow to shoulder-length. He didn’t like it, couldn’t stand the weight on his neck or the strands that fell into his field of vision, so he had shorn it all off with a pair of safety scissors.

Kenma, he decides, must be very strange.

Ryuu is regarding the boy still, face twisting oddly. 

“You heard him, punk,” he snarls. “Hands where we can see ‘em! Or you’ll have to answer to _me._ ”

Ryuu isn’t nearly as intimidating as Shouyou or Kenma, but he is trying. His eyes are friendly still, not shifting or frozen or ripping him apart at the seams. His hands don’t fidget and wander like Kenma’s, but they do clench into fists at his sides.  
Ryuu does seem like the type to be perpetually ready for a fight- it’s fitting.

The boy does as they say. He’s curious to see where this goes, curious to see what exactly these people _are_.

Shouyou doesn’t take long to retrieve Daichi; he never even travels far enough away that his voice cannot be heard. He returns quickly, a few steps behind yet another new face.

Daichi is taller than Shouyou and Kenma, but barely shorter than Ryuu. He wears a vest, the same vest as the other three, and the boy at the end of the world is quickly realizing that they must be a team or a group of some sort.

The idea that people teamed up for the end of the world is upsetting, because he has spent so much time alone.

Regardless, Daichi. Daichi is muscled. Sturdy. Down-to-earth. His eyes are warm, which the boy can’t help but be absolutely _fascinated_ by, because any person with warm eyes after witnessing the end of the world is a person very different from himself. Daichi looks like a leader, and he knows it, carries himself within the ranks of his men but still distinguished, with his head held high. 

They make a pretty picture, the four of them, Daichi with his warmth and Ryuu with his clenched fists and Kenma with his faded hair and Shouyou with his cold eyes. 

The boy at the end of the world wants to draw them.

They’re stuck in something of a stand-off for the moment, none of them quite sure how to proceed. Kenma takes a seat on the ground. Shouyou joins him seconds later.

The boy at the end of the world is accustomed to silence but not to tension. He’s growing nervous, uneasy, uncomfortable, when Daichi speaks.

“Who are you?” He asks, an innocent question that the boy does not know how to answer.

A name. Daichi wants a name.

His name has fallen out of use, been phased out of his life. But he does have one. He has to, he _knows_ that he has to, because he lived _before_ the end of the world, and people who lived in the _before_ have names. His mother gave him a name, he had friends that called him by that name, he wrote that name on school paper after school paper, and that name was-

Ah.

The boy who lives in the shack at the end of the world looks up.

“Sugawara Koushi.”

There is no crack of thunder. There are no gasps of horror or surprise, no sudden riot, but the moment is monumental nonetheless because he again has a name.

“Okay, Sugawara,” Daichi says. He pinches the bridge of his nose and takes a deep, slow breath.

“Alright, okay, Sugawara. Sugawara. Jesus Christ, where have you even been _living_ out here?”

The boy who lives in the- no, _Sugawara_ again, cocks his head.

“The end of the world.”

“Jesus _Christ_ ,” Daichi repeats. Like a broken record. Like somebody accustomed to repetition.

Ryuu, whose fists had unclenched after Daichi had failed to deem Sugawara a threat, looks confused.

“What the hell does that mean?” He grumbles. “We’ve _all_ been livin’ at the end of the world.”

“What Ryuu _means_ ,” Daichi interjects, “ Is I was asking where you live right now. Physically.”

That question is easier. Sugawara Koushi exists in the shack at the end of the world. That much is fact. Sugawara exists there, so he must _live_ there.

And yet…

The shack at the end of the world was not meant to sustain life. Contain life, maybe, but even then only bits and pieces. The shack at the end of the world took and took from Sugawara until he was all hollowed out, and he does not want these people who are so full of life to succumb to its corrugated metal walls, does not want them to turn dull and brittle as he has. He had been delegated to a little corner of a broken and barren world, and, never having been one for overstepping boundaries, stayed there.

He does not want to take them there, as Daichi will undoubtedly ask him to, but he will. They seem better than himself, unlikely to allow themselves to be caged. 

So he tells them about the shack at the end of the world. 

“I found this old shed after...after…” his words stick in his throat. He can’t bring himself to say it, can’t manage a description of the apocalypse they all experienced. 

Daichi understands. They all do.

“Will you take us there?” Daichi asks.

He nods, beckons, and they begin the journey. Sugawara, never one to pass up an opportunity, considers his temporary travel mates. 

They will not easily fall, he is sure of that; there is steel in their spines. And, if Shouyou’s wandering eyes as they travel are any indication, a few in particular may even be something of a flight risk.

His shack is met with general disdain, bordering on outright disgust. Sugawara hears Kenma tell Shouyou to stay away from the walls. Their horror is comforting; they won’t stay if they’re disgusted, and just _maybe_ they won’t make him stay either. He’s quite done with this chapter of his life, thank you very much. Falsified contentment be damned, Sugawara was never happy in the shack at the end of the world.

They follow him into his house (not _home,_ never _home_ ), the five of them barely managing to squeeze into the small space. They inspect it, Kenma in particular, his sharp eyes taking in every detail and cataloguing them. He drifts towards the drawings of the sky, running his fingers over their torn edges. 

“The sky?” He asks.

“The sky,” Sugawara affirms. “ Ugly, isn’t it?”

Kenma glances at Sugawara, still toying with the edges of the papers. 

“Very.”

A loud _clang_ draws both of their attention towards the edge of the shack. Shouyou is standing there sheepishly, Ryuu next to him, rolling cans at their feet.

“Oops?” Shouyou offers. He doesn’t really sound very sorry at all. Ryuu at least has the decency to _try_ and look sheepish.

“ _Shouyou_ ,” Kenma says.

“ _Ryuu_ ,” Daichi adds.

Shouyou puffs out his cheeks in a childish display of frustration.

“Sorry,” he huffs. 

“Sorry,” Ryuu follows, sounding more genuine. “But hey, it’s not like anythin’ broke!”

“Principle of the matter, Ryuu,” Daichi says. “And as Sugawara very _kindly_ invited us to his shelter, we are going to treat both _him_ and his _house_ with respect, correct?”

“Yes, Daichi,” the two chorus.

Daichi nods, placated for now. He reaches down and begins to pick up the cans, not stacking them into pyramids like Sugawara but instead neat, orderly ( _dull_ ) rows. Shouyou and Ryuu, thoroughly cowed, help him. 

It’s very calm, methodical work. It looks nice; if Sugawara had not had enough stacking cans to last a lifetime, he may well have joined in. 

Instead, he watches. At an earlier time, he would have berated himself for being creepy. But Sugawara as he is now has not seen any people in a very long time. He can’t help the way his eyes trace the paths of the four new figures within his shack, or they way he wonders how many times he himself has walked those same paths.

There’s something fascinating about watching these people go through the motions that he knows so well. It’s a novelty.

And of things that are novel, Shouyou, absorbed in his task, accidentally kicks one of the fallen cans. It rolls towards Sugawara. He reaches down to pick it up, but Shouyou is already there. He grins at Sugawara as he picks up the can and scampers back over to Ryuu and Daichi. Kenma follows in his wake (as Kenma seems wont to do), and the two continue their work.

From what little Sugawara has seen, Shouyou, especially, is strange. He is loud and excited, an alarming juxtaposition to the dull monotony Sugawara is accustomed to. He does not look right in the shack at the end of the world, and he does not look right to Sugawara. He is alive and moving, like his dog (or maybe a cat) used to be, like the cicadas and the crickets and the world used to be. 

“You’re alive,” Sugawara says.

Shouyou’s brows furrow. He looks up and away from the task at hand, focusing instead on Sugawara. His eyes are cold, and his hair is like the sky.

“Well, yeah. A lot of people are, actually and-“

“Why?” 

It was the wrong thing to ask. The room stands to attention, the air itself humming with anticipation.

Ryuu shoots Sugawara a look, a warning that his retained friendliness is not weakness, and that he can protect if need be. Daichi is next. His warning glare is still offset by his warmth, but he is commanding nonetheless. Kenma follows, focusing his catlike eyes on Sugawara as he pulls a stray thread from his vest. 

Shouyou, however, remains firmly in front of his friends. He has straightened a bit, set his shoulders and locked eyes with Sugawara.

Sugawara realizes rather quickly that he was wrong before. Shouyou’s eyes are not cold.

They burn.

“Well, what exactly was the alternative?” He says. “To die? There’s been so much death in the world lately, Sugawara. I saw no point in doing anything _other_ than living.”

He relaxes and grins. Sugawara is reminded of the sunny days before the world ended, before the thick brown clouds choked the sky.

“And besides,” he giggles. “ Kenma would _kill_ me if I died. Have you seen him when he gets mad? He gets all scowly and his eyes squint, it’s really scary!” 

The tension subsides, still present but brought from a boil to a simmer. 

He made a mistake, in questioning. Or perhaps it was that vein of questioning; asking somebody why they are alive isn’t exactly the most friendly way to start a conversation. They are on edge now, hesitant in their task and eyeing the exits, because he failed to account for the protectiveness that would emerge naturally between a small group of people living in a world such as theirs. Sugawara is still an unknown, and their priority is safety.

Maybe he had been too direct. His tendency to laser-focus had, even before the end of the world, often been interpreted as a threat. People don’t like scrutiny.

So Shouyou alone is a volatile topic, and Sugawara has no doubt that commenting on any single one of these individuals would similarly pull himself under fire, but maybe these strangers together are safe to talk about. Forged bonds would be a comfortable topic among a close-knit group.

In short, speaking of Shouyou alone would be dangerous, and speaking of Kenma alone would be dangerous, but speaking of Shouyou and Kenma together may be safe.

And he is still curious and they in particular are bright, so speak of them Sugawara will.

He drifts towards the group, which is back to lining up cans (he has many, _many_ cans), and, casual as someone like him can be, sidles up besides Kenma and Shouyou.

“So how did you two meet?” He asks. He’s not subtle, not at all, but Kenma looks curious too, so Sugawara has no doubt that he will get some answers. In exchange for some answers of his own, eventually, because give-and-take is an unspoken rule for those living at the end of the world.

“We knew each other before,” Kenma says softly. “Same high school. Dating, actually, both then and now, as much as you can really _date_ now. I was a grade above, and Shouyou needed a tutor.”

“Kenma’s really smart! He helped me pass precalc,” Shouyou chimes in.

It’s so _mundane_ , two people that Sugawara now knows to only be teenagers talking about school and tutoring and dating. They were robbed by the end of the world, the two of them, of an education and so many milestones. _Dating,_ Kenma had said, and it’s so, so sad because they should be doing stupid shit like making out in the back of a movie theater, not taking on a broken world. It’s a small-scale tragedy borne of a much larger one.

Sugawara is hit with the scope of it, for a moment, the implications of the end of the world as a tragedy that cannot be ignored. It has played just as large a part in the forging of these two’s relationship as their dating in high school.

“And after?” Sugawara says.

Shouyou stills, placing the can in his hands down. Kenma rubs circles on his back, lightly and carefully, like he’s afraid Shouyou is going to break.

“I had a mother and sister,” Shouyou says. “ They didn’t make it. Kenma lived only with his father, so they took me in.” He stops talking, takes a shuddering breath and leans into Kenma. For support, Sugawara thinks, support and comfort.

“We knew Daichi from before, too,” Kenma continues, picking up the story. “He ran a study group that Shouyou dragged me to a couple of times.”

“If I didn’t force you to socialize, you would have never left the house,” Shouyou says. They all pretend not to notice the tears escaping from the corners of his eyes.

“Irrelevant,” Kenma coughs, embarrassed. “Either way, Daichi sought us out after. Him and Ryuu. They were forming a rudimentary relief group, sort of? Scavenging and stuff. Looting, but Daichi doesn’t like that term.”

“It implies _stealing_ ,” Daichi grumbles. Sugawara starts, but is unsurprised that their conversation was overheard. The shack is small.

“Right,” Kenma says. “I honestly didn’t see the point, but Shouyou wanted to join. He kept bringing it up an’ trying to be subtle, but it’s _Shouyou_ -”

“Hey!”

“-So he didn’t do a very good job. Anyways, eventually my father joined in. Said he wanted me to ‘Live life the best I could with what we were given.’”

He scoffs a bit, exasperated but fond.

“He’s always been a little idealistic. Anyways, I was still against it, but Shouyou asked me one more time. So I thought it over, and decided ‘why not? There’s not really much else the world has to offer now.’” He quietly reaches out, interlacing his fingers with Shouyou’s.

“I figured I’d better stay with one of the few things that still matter.

It’s a sweet story. Heartbreakingly so. The room is silent for a moment, allowing for contemplation, consideration, of the situation of these two and of the world at large.

Tragedy is difficult to concentrate on, though, and Sugawara has experienced enough hardship to last for a while. So he asks another question, one that has been stewing in the back of his mind.

“Relief group?” He says.

“Yep,” Ryuu jumps in. “And a damn good one at that! It’s only the four of us right now, but we still manage to find tons of stuff. We’re the best at what   
we do, and don’t you forget it!”

He points a thumb at his puffed-out chest, tall and proud. He reminds Suga of a bird, all preening and ruffled feathers, rounded edges and interspersed sharp angles. A passive threat. 

He hasn’t seen a bird in some time. He wonders if Ryuu is the closest he will ever get. Inexplicably, he doesn’t think that he would mind.

“Yes,” Daichi sighs, long-suffering. He absentmindedly dusts his hands off on his vest. “A relief group. Nothing official, but we travel around, do what we can where we’re needed.”

“Wander?” Sugawara asks. “No base?”

“Not really,” says Daichi. “I felt it wouldn’t be helpful, because there aren’t really any permanent settlements nowadays. People are trying their best, but it’s still a bit too soon. So we jump around.”

“Nomadic. We’ve come in a full circle,” Kenma mumbles.

“Nomadic?” Shouyou asks, cocking his head.

“I’ll tell you later.”

“But anyways,” Daichi continues as he places the last can in the line. “Our group is small, but that doesn’t mean we would be adverse to growing. The more the merrier, right?”

“Yeah!” cheers Ryuu. “We’d love some more members!”

He winks, honest to god _winks_.

An invitation. Undeniably, without a doubt an invitation.

That _was_ an invitation, right?

Sugawara grins awkwardly, intent on deflecting the focus away from himself. Ryuu pumps his fist, still fired up, and Daichi nods and looks away, back to the completed stacks, casting sidelong glances at Sugawara every now and then. 

It’s odd.

It’s borderline uncomfortable, because Sugawara has never been oblivious, nor incompetent. Daichi is asking him to join their group. Daichi is asking him to join them, to leave his shack behind.

Sugawara wants nothing more, has _never_ wanted anything more than to escape these walls. Why, then, does he hesitate? He should be _out_ by now, should have grasped the hand extended by Daichi and run far, far away with this motley group. He would fit in well, he knows, because before the end Sugawara was a people person, an extrovert through and through. This is perfect. This is all he could have ever wanted when the world fell apart, a chance to construct his life anew.

Why then, does he hesitate?

Is it fear, he wonders, fear of the unknown? He has sunk too far into the walls of this shack, has made a place of living if not a place of comfort. Does he not want to wander? Deviation exists outside of the space he has carved out for himself. Deviation requires dedication, persistence and perseverance.

Is he capable of that? He is a wisp of a human being, exists just as much within the shack at the end of the world as in his own body. He may as well not even have a face, because he has not seen it in so long- what kind of human is he, to not know his face? To lack an identity right down to the cartilage and lips and sclerae that he must have?

How can he leave his shack if he hardly exists within it? Will he be able to withstand the direct scrutiny of a hardened world without shriveling?

He wants to though, so badly, and his impulse control has been worn down through weeks and weeks and months and months of monotony. He wants to leave, simple as that, so he will set his fear aside and he will _leave_.

Though, there is something that must be done first. He cannot go in blind, and ritualistic as he next actions may be, he will carry them out for peace of mind.

Sugawara wants to see himself. He wants to know how he will appear to others when he forces himself into the world once again. When he joins the ranks of civilization, he wants to know how he will look.

The four members of the relief group are milling around aimlessly. Waiting, Sugawara knows, for him.

He considers them, each and every one in a split second. Who would be most likely to have a mirror? He doesn’t know, has only known them for an hour or so, not long enough to learn anything. He doesn’t know.

Chance has not been kind to him, but he leaves this decision in its hands. 

He taps the closest boy, Kenma, on the shoulder and watches as he curls in on himself like the edges of a burning photograph. The imagery fits Kenma, who is dyed in tones of sepia, who would look right at home with a lighter in hand and ashes ground beneath the heel of his boot.

He shakes the image from his mind. Burns it, until his mind is once again sterile and empty, a hazy brown.

“Do you have a mirror?” He asks.

It’s a stretch, he knows- there would be very little reason for Kenma to have a mirror before the end of the world, much less after- but he can’t help himself; Sugawara is still _curious._

To his (everlasting) astonishment, Kenma nods once and pulls a compact mirror, the type used when applying makeup, from one of his many pockets.

“You'd be surprised,” he says before Sugawara can ask, “How often a mirror comes in handy. We all have one.” 

He hands it off to Sugawara and waits, arms crossed, poised and put-together. Or half-asleep, apparently, seeing how his eyelids keep drifting together. 

Sugawara steels himself with a deep breath, and then another for good measure. This, like his name, is monumental, the next step in his once again becoming a human being. Something more than a faded shadow lurking at the ends of the world. A living thing, with a face and a name and all of the things that come after.

He opens the compact.

The boy in the mirror is a man, indisputably, a tired, haggard looking man. His hazel eyes are hollowed and cold, dull like the blade of his razor. His hair is silver and choppy, his cutting it without a mirror leaving some chunks of it much longer than the others, and his bangs are hopelessly uneven. His sickly pale skin is marred by near-black veins that creep along the edges of his forehead and dark smears below his eyes.

Kenma stands silently, knowingly, as Sugawara tilts the compact to look at even more of his face.

“Huh,” he says.

There is a mole beneath his left eye.

“Huh,” he says again.

He stands for another minute, studying himself. He commits his face to memory, burns it into the back of his eyelids, tries to reconcile Sugawara Koushi with the boy who lives at the end of the world. Eventually, Kenma coughs.

“I really can’t let you keep that,” he says. “ But if you joined us, we would probably have to find one for you.”

Sugawara nearly drops the mirror, taken aback. Kenma is _blunt_ , and now he’s standing and looking at Sugawara, eyes boring into his soul. 

“Why?” He asks. He closes the compact and drops it into Kenma’s hand. The other boy shoves it back into his pocket.

“Daichi likes picking up strays. This place is a mess. _You’re_ a mess, and we have room,” Kenma says. He looks towards the floor, scuffing the tip of his boot against the dirtied surface. “Does it really matter why?”

“Yes.”

Call him petulant, but Sugawara would like at least a vague idea of why they want him. Granted, there’s next to nothing that Kenma could say that would put Sugawara off from joining, but he still wants to know.

“Fine. I’m curious about you. An extra pair of hands means less work that I’ve gotta do. Ryuu and Shouyou just like people, and it’s been killing them to have so few to talk to.” He grows quieter for a moment, mumbles as he wrings his hands. “Shouyou seems to like you already.”

Ah. That explains it. Sugawara will admit, he feels something of a means to an end, but he is going to go with them regardless. He has established himself a baseline, knows his face and his name, so it would be a waste to remain inside of his self-imposed prison. He’s going to go. He needs to go.

Go, go, go.

“Kenma,” Sugawara says. “When you guys leave, can I come with you?”

Kenma’s lips quirk in the slightest hint of a smile.

“Let me ask Daichi,” he says.

It’s a formality, they both know, because Daichi has already heard them. The only thing keeping him from saying so is the remnants of social etiquette that flicker in the back of his brain.

He watches as Kenma approaches the leader of his group, not hesitating a bit. The trust shared among the members of the relief group (Did they have a name? Sugawara ought to ask) was truly something else. 

With a few murmured words between Daichi and Kenma, and then Daichi and Ryuu, and finally Daichi and Shouyou, the relief group makes their way in front of him.

They are standing in order of descending height. Sugawara wonders if that was intentional. 

“Sugawara Koushi,” Daichi says. “How’d you like to join our group?”

There it is.

Sugawara lets a smile spread across his face, a real one, one that strains the muscles in his cheeks until they hurt.

“I’d love to.”

And he would, he really would. His joy lights up like firecrackers in his chest, like a physical popping and bubbling that spills from his lips as light giggles. He covers his mouth with his fingers, a hasty attempt at a barrier, an _unsuccessful_ attempt at a barrier. 

“I’d love to!” He giggles. He gives in and removes his hands, throwing his head back to laugh freely at the ceiling of his (Not really his anymore, huh?) shack.

Joy blends into elation, and he knows that he has made the right choice. He is going to be free at last. He lets the feeling, the sensation, flood his body, from the top of his head to the tips of his fingers. He lets it spill into his words with a sort of reckless freedom, lets it make them taste like electricity on his tongue.

“Yes, yes, please!”

“Then it’s settled!” Daichi claps his hands. “Welcome to Karasuno relief group!”

“Name still pending!” Shouyou cheers.

“Thank you,” Sugawara says, still smiling. Tears begin to prick at the corners of his eyes. “Now what do you say we take these cans and get out of here?”

“Yeah!” 

They don’t leave right away, instead taking their time to pack, to differentiate between the important and the anything but. The cans are brought along, as are the pots and pans and blankets, but the calendar stays. The calendar, the paper crane, and the old, chipped mug.

Sugawara can’t bring himself to care as he steps out into the polluted world, feels the fog cling to his skin, watches it trace the silhouettes of the people who flank him. His new friends. With time, he is sure, a family.

Together, they take one, two, three steps to stand on the cusp of a new world.

Sugawara does not look back.

___________

Somewhere, at some time, a chain-link fence falls to the ground. It will be overtaken by grass in time, is already halfway there, overtaken and forgotten. A lake lies stagnant. Undisturbed. 

Far behind is a dilapidated shack, tired at the end of the world, with corrugated metal walls, a faded calendar, and drawings of the sky. There is a bed tucked in the corner, and colorful labels torn from cans and tacked to the walls.

One of them flutters to the ground. It lays in the empty corner, disturbing a fine layer of dust.

There is nobody to tend to its rectangular patch of stippled grass, to sit in silence and feel lost. There is nobody to watch as the backs of five figures are obscured by the haze. 

It is left alone.

 

FIN.

**Author's Note:**

> This one was really fun to write. As for what I’m doing next, I have a kiyoyachi fic in the works, but it’s both humor and dialogue-heavy, neither of which is my strong suit. I’ve also got something for BNHA going and other random little bits.
> 
> Everything is still vaguely not-cohesive? Incohesive? Whatever the word is there, but I’m sure I’ll figure it out.


End file.
